End of Term Report: Arrow

When the baddie’s the best thing about your show…

Arrow‘s third season took a serious beating from critics and audience alike, so it was incumbent on it to come up with something much better this year. With one sterling exception, it didn’t up its game anything like as much as it needed to, and in one area the show broke a bond with one loyal member of the audience who’d been there from the beginning and who was willing to forgive much just because this was a show about Green Arrow.

Essentially, season 4 was same again, arranged slightly differently, from season 3. And season 2. And season 1. True, the show upped its game in the form of its chosen Big Bad whose season-long arc aimed at destroying Star City: I may have been among the few who enjoyed Matt Nable’s performance as R’as Al’Ghul last time, but Neal McDonough as Damien Darkh was an upgrade and a half: McDonough’s larger-than-life relish of his role was great to watch.

And the stakes were higher, since it was not just Star City that was up for destruction, but this time the entire planet.

Now that’s two mentions of Star City and one of Green Arrow already, when this show has lasted three seasons on the non-comics names of Starling City and The Arrow. It’s been a welcome development, but it really only emphasised where the show got it wrong in the first place, thinking that it had to go with more realistic names so as not to put off its audience.

Like The Flash, the first half of the series was limited by the need to participate in setting up Legends of Tomorrow, which in Arrow‘s case, primarily meant bending the story around reviving Sarah lance and returning to Nanda Parbat and re-evoking the rivalry between Malcolm Merlin and Nyssa Al’Ghul over the league of Assassins.

Meanwhile, Oliver is living happily in retirement with Felicity and planning to give her a ring until she drags him back to assist Team Arrow, which is drowning vertically. Felicity finds herself head of Palmer Technology, which leads into rescuing Ray Palmer for Legends, whilst Oliver fools everybody in the newly-rechristened (in honour of Ray, an offcomer who was only there for about nine months) Star City by appearing as the Green Arrow that nobody connects with the recently deceased no-colour Arrow who was functionally and physically identical to the Green one.

Yeesh.

Complicate this with the mysterious flash forward at the end of episode 1, with Oliver (and Barry) mourning someone inknown who’d wound up in a grave, which the showrunners just threw in without any idea of who would end up in it, and the stage was set for another typically confused season, in which very little would make any coherent sense, especially if you took the trouble to compare the events of one episode with that of another (or sometimes even within the same episode).

This year’s flashbacks saw us back to Lian Yu, with Ollie sent in under cover to frustrate the mysterious efforts of Baron Riker to uncover something that turned out to have a magical link to Damien Darhk. As Ollie was away five years, seeing the final year of flashbacks link into the start of season 1 is my main motivation for staying on for season 5.

Because about two-thirds of the way through, a very large part of my connection to this series broke, suddenly and finally. I’ve always liked Felicity, and I like how Emily Bett Rickards plays her (and I like how Emily Bett Rickards looks when playing her). It’s been a rollercoaster this year: from idyllic retirement together, ending because Felicity couldn’t leave crime-fighting alone, to engagement, warmth, trust, tycoondom, paraplegia, and a completely hypocrital reversal over Ollie keeping secrets from her when it came to his son.

Never mind the concept that sometimes people have to keep secrets even from those closest to them, because they are not free to spread the information without the say-so of the person to whom it belongs, Felicity totally lost it over little William. And when Ollie decided that the only way to protect his offspring was to send his ex- and the boy away somewhere even he didn’t know – without consulting Felicity on something that had fuck all to do with her – and she broke up with him, I broke with the programme.

If they want to go to such contrived lengths to fuck around with a successful and valuable relationship, sobeit, but I completely lost interest. Ever since, I’ve been watching solely from habit and the primeval urge to know how it comes out, but I can no longer invest anything of myself into the show.

It ended up being Laurel (Black Canary) Lance in the grave, the showrunners finally giving way to nearly four years of hatred by getting rid of Katie Cassidy (not without a last words declaration that it was always Ollie she loved that rang about as true as a three dollar coin). Incidentally, showing my shallow side here, in nearly four years on Arrow I never found Katie Cassidy attractive, but one ten minute guest spot on The Flash as the Earth-2 villainess, Black Siren, and boy was she hot!

One positive for next season is the announcement that Echo Kellum will be a regular. Kellum has appeared sporadically in season 4 as a genius level inventor at Palmertech, but although he’s been saddled with the name Curtis, instead of Michael, he’s been seen designing T-spheres, so I hope next season we’ll be looking at Team Arrow expanding to include Mr. Terrific.

As Terrific is another old favourite of mine, I am hoping for spin-off material.

The season ended with the same disregard for practicality and emotional logic that the show has developed from the beginning, except that a show four years old should have grown out of it by now and this one’s only getting worse by the episode as the emotional beats are being tortured into ugly and impossible shapes in order to service the latest plot contrivance.

So Damien Darhk dies, at the Green Arrow’s hands, in public, the Green Arrow that’s Star City’s investment in hope. Diggle and Thea resign to cater to their inner demons, Thea to sit on a couch, picking at the hem of her designer jeans and Diggle to re-enlist in the military (makes perfect sense to me, folks). Oliver gets sworn in as Mayor for giving an inspirational speech whilst stood on the roof of a taxi (which wasn’t moving, thankfully) that somehow managed to get people rioting in panic over being about to die from a nuclear missile to stop and listen to, even when the missile was visible in the sky, racing towards them.

And Felicitysticks with Oliver which, by my count, is about the seventy-third different and incompatible emotional stance she’s struck this series alone.

It’s been a busy season. I’ve bailed on Lucifer already, and had Agent Carter cancelled out from under me. I’ve gotten hooked on iZombie which will come into next season’s mix, and I’ve also gotten into Person of Interest, which won’t because it’s rapidly closing in on the end of its final season. The rest look good for another year, but I am very close to dropping over the edge with Arrow, which needs to have an exceptional season 5 if it wants to keep me on board for any season 6. Based on its record to date, I’m not expecting miracles.

So, summer’s here and, except for Preacher it looks like being three months or so of catch-up. I’ll try to finish off Parks and Recreation and Spartacus. See you in September.